As we reported yesterday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is supposed to be ‘almost 24/7’ at the factory to help fix a few bottlenecks in Model 3 production to bring the volume to 5,000 units per week.
While working on the production, he still found time to argue with Tesla shorts and pro-union activists who the CEO says are ‘getting desperate’ with their propaganda.
He now put a deadline on when they will be proven wrong.
Last month, Musk bought $10 million worth of Tesla stock (TSLA) just as he predicted a short squeeze that would be a ‘next level short burn of the century’.
As we reported last week, it looked like his prediction already started to become reality as Tesla’s stock price is rising and people betting against the company are reportedly losing billions of dollars.
But a short interest analyst said that there’s no evidence of a significant short squeeze on Tesla’s stock yet.
Today, Musk said that it should start in “about 3 weeks”:
They have about three weeks before their short position explodes
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 17, 2018
That’s the end of the quarter when Tesla will be reporting its second-quarter delivery and production numbers.
Tesla will confirm the status of Model 3 production at that point and whether or not they have achieved their goal of 5,000 units, which Musk said would lead to profitability during the second half of the year.
The CEO said that the company is “almost there”:
“Profit” just means you earned more money than you spent & certainly does spark innovation. Jesus. This is obv a good thing & extremely hard. It has taken Tesla 15 years & we’re almost there. Every other US car company besides Ford & Tesla has gone bankrupt.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 17, 2018
Short sellers on Wall Street have been building up massive positions against Tesla. As of the last report, the bet was worth as much as $12 billion and short sellers are starting to have issues finding shares to borrow, which increases the borrowing fees.
Back in 2012, Musk commented on the short interest of Tesla’s stock and warned that anyone holding a stock position against the company will have a “tsunami of hurt” coming for them. During the 12 following months, Tesla’s stock price increased by 461% – much of which was attributed to a short squeeze after Tesla reported its first quarterly profit in Q1 2013.
In recent weeks, Musk has been commenting more than ever about the possibility of another massive short squeeze and now he is even putting a timeline on it.
Featured Image: Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, reacts to a reporter’s question following the electric automaker’s initial public offering on Nasdaq, Tuesday, June, 29, 2010 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Electrek’s Take
Ever since Musk’s April’s Fool joke about Tesla going bankrupt, I have been saying that he is showing a level of confidence about Tesla that we have never seen before.
This example is arguably even more important since he is even putting a timeline to it.
Keep in mind that the quarter is almost over and Musk knows where the company is better than anyone at this point.
He already has a good idea of the delivery number for the quarter and he has the best insights into the potential of Tesla reaching 5,000 units per week by the end of the month.
Therefore, I think that him saying that “short positions will explode” in just a few weeks is either a really ballsy move or he knows something we don’t.
I think it’s the latter.
What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.
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